Today we hear that TBWA’s global dedicated Apple unit Media Arts Lab has made some changes atop its Cupertino headquarters in the latest round of an ongoing executive reshuffling.
In February, we learned that chief strategy officer Marc-Antoine Jarry and founding partner/executive creative director Eric Grunbaum had left the shop, which then hired W+K Portland’s Rebecca Stambanis and The Martin Agency’s Jorge Calleja, respectively, to replace them while also naming fashion marketing veteran Kaitlyn Wilkins as executive director of integration.
Today we hear that worldwide managing director Dave Dreyer is no longer with the agency and that ECD Steve Turner has resigned.
Dryer was one of several executives hired by president Erica Hoholick after she joined Media Arts Lab in early 2014. The two had worked together at TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A., where he was group account director and she was managing director. Dreyer later spent four years as EVP and group account director at Deutsch, where he began his agency career in 2002 as an account supervisor.
Turner spent nine-plus years at Media Arts Lab after working two stints at Wieden + Kennedy as a creative director and co-founding Greek branding consultancy Milk. His name appears in credits for ads promoting the iPad and other Apple products, but we’re slightly more impressed to learn that he helped design the covers of Blur’s Parklife and Pulp’s Different Class while working as an art director in mid-’90s London. (He started his agency career at that city’s Leagas Delaney in 1996.)
As our sources tell it, Apple has overseen/approved of all recent staffing changes in an effort to refresh its advertising team. CCO Duncan Milner is now one of the few leaders left from the initial incarnation of the Media Arts Lab project.
Agency representatives have not yet responded to requests for comment.
Not to inject our totally irrelevant opinions here or anything, but many of the unit’s latest Apple ads have been pretty good…